Story: Caving

Page 3 – Caving in New Zealand

Caving is the recreational sport of finding and exploring
caves. Speleology is the scientific study and exploration of
caves.

Cavers would be the first to admit that they are an odd
group. It takes a certain mindset to spend hours below the
ground, often getting wet, dirty and cold, squeezing through
narrow tunnels and abseiling down waterfalls. But cavers are
underground explorers, and there are rewards, such as finding
a deep passage where no one has ever been.

Caving as a sport

A group of cavers began exploring the lava caves in
Auckland’s volcanic cones in the late 1940s. They soon
progressed to limestone caves in the Waikato and at Waitomo
in the King Country. Henry Lambert founded the New Zealand
Speleological Society in 1949.

They faced many obstacles – few had cars, or even
telephones to organise transport. Often exploring caves on
farmland, they would sleep in shearing sheds or farmhouses.
They used miners’ carbide lamps, and made rope ladders.

In 1955 the first headquarters were set up in an empty
house near Waitomo. Many new caves and passages were found in
the Waitomo area.

Harwoods Hole

In 1957 a group of North Island cavers ventured south to
Tākaka hill near Nelson, where a farmer led them to a hole he
had never dared to enter. The cavers were ecstatic,
estimating the maximum width to be 60 metres, and the depth
200 metres. They named it Harwoods Hole, after the original
landowner.

On Christmas Day 1958, cavers were lowered into the abyss
on a winch. David May, a schoolboy, was the first to go down,
in a parachute harness with a steel seat. At a depth of 183
metres his feet touched bottom. Other members then explored
800 metres of passages.

A year later, the cavers returned, seeking a link to
Starlight Cave, at the head of The Gorge Creek in the Tākaka
Valley. They placed a green dye (fluorescein) in the stream
at the bottom of Harwoods Hole, and it emerged four hours
later in The Gorge Creek. Using explosives they blasted a
stalactite block, allowing three cavers to make the first
through trip. At 357 metres, Harwoods Hole (connected to
Starlight Cave) was at the time the country’s deepest known
cave.

Deepest and longest caves

Harwoods Hole is in New Zealand’s caving Mecca in
north-west Nelson. Here, the marble within Mt Owen, Mt Arthur
and Tākaka hill is riddled with subterranean passages. All
but one of the country’s 30 deepest caves lie here.

The deepest cave is Nettlebed, on Mt Arthur. It was
discovered in 1969, and in 1986 a connection was made with
another cave, Blizzard Pot. Nettlebed has been mapped to a
depth of 889 metres.

The longest cave is Bulmer Cavern on Mt Owen. Discovered
in 1985, it has over 50 kilometres of explored length.
Unusually, Bulmer is a dry cave, so explorers must carry
water.

Some cavers aim to map a cave’s depth to 1,000 metres, and
its length to 100 kilometres. The most likely place for this
is in the Nelson marble country. Discoveries continue, and
unmapped areas in existing caves await mapping. The major
discovery since 2000s was Odyssey Cave on Mt Bell. In 2007
this had been explored to 296 metres deep and 1,700 metres
long.

A helmet at Harwoods

Success turned to disaster at Harwoods Hole in 1960, two
years after cavers claimed it as the country’s deepest
known cave. Group leader Peter Lambert was being winched
out of the hole when he was killed by falling rocks. It was
New Zealand’s first caving fatality. Lambert’s helmet was
placed on a cairn at the bottom of the cave as a
memorial.

Cave diving

At some caves with drowned passages, enthusiasts use
diving equipment. In the 1990s at Waitomo, Kieran McKay and
others found underwater tunnels to dry caves, adding to the
length of known passageways there.

Divers have also explored Nelson’s Riwaka Resurgence, the
source of the Riwaka River. They do not always find pockets
of air, but sometimes just submerged tunnels and shafts.

Cave diving can be hazardous. On 20 May 1995 Dave Weaver
died while in a shaft in the Pearse Resurgence, at the base
of Mt Arthur in Nelson. Two divers recovered his body in
January 1997.